Sanguinary
by Tsume Yuki
Summary: Vampire venom has a way of eating through human memories. Having lived one life and remembered another before being turned, it's no surprise Lucy has a bit of a problem trying to remain focused. Self Insert
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

.

Deserts are a harsh environment, and the Mexican wasteland is no different. The sand burns hot in the day, sears cold in the night. It's either the bite of the sun or frost, there is no amiable in between, not for the humans anyway.

Crouching low atop one of the more stable stone houses, Jasper Whitlock stares out across the dark stretch of a future battleground, the infinite galaxy of stars lighting the landscape.

It won't be long until Maria has him march the latest batch of Newborns across this place, has him conqueror more territory in her name.

It's been thirty years now, thirty years since he woke up with this parched throat, this unquenchable urge to tear through flesh for the sweet nectar beneath. Thirty years since he became this godless monster.

Thirty long years, and nothing has changed.

The towns evolve around him, slowly but surely the human continue to change.

He remains forever stuck in this state, trapped in eternity, the constant loop of battle. It's only going to end with his violent dismemberment and swift burning. It's all the same thing, the same fate, and Jasper can only keep fighting to survive for as long as he can. The lifespan of his willpower is uncertain; how long until he falls to his nature, becomes the still stone, ossified?

He is not irreplaceable, no matter what Maria believes. There would be another to fill his shoes; perhaps not as gifted, perhaps lacking the innate understanding, but there would be another.

For now, something within him will just not permit surrender as a valid option. Every time he tries, when his limbs still and a Newborn approaches with snarling fangs and waves upon waves of bloodlust… he just cannot abnegate this half-life he has.

Even with its lust for blood, untouched by the light of day, it is still the only life he has, so Jasper clings to it.

On the eastern horizon the sky is pinking, the final call of night. The sun will drive him into hiding once again; Jasper steps back into the shade in preparation.

It is only the soldier, the major in him that notes the discrepancy.

There's a woman stood upon the dirt path, her clothing painfully out of place in the Mexican desert. The vampiric beauty he's long since grown used to these past thirty years drapes across her features; but her appearance is wrong.

Not her features, but her clothing, her posture, her stance.

An oddity. Blood splatters across sand, louder than the sun in the sky. A bold shade of blue, deeper than the midday sky, the dress flows down the body, so unlike the corset. So unlike the style Jasper sees so very often upon the women of Mexico.

This woman is not local. This woman is a vampire.

This woman does not sparkle in the sun; this woman is not physically here.

Her emotions, though present, are numbed. As if Jasper senses them through a layering of film. A cloud shielding the sky. Undeniably present, but sheltered.

Crimson eyes flick up to stare when Jasper purposefully scuffs his boot, his body tense and ready for action. She's clearly gifted, has to be to remain unnoticed by the steadily waking humans and she's unknown. Another looking for territory, for hunting grounds?

But no, those eyes gaze upon him and there's a fleeting touch of recognition, a whisper of familiarity. Confusion, thick and rolling beneath the wind.

Then she's gone, what must have been some form of projected image winking out of existence.

.

The mirage in the desert.

.

* * *

.

Lucy Dosett is born August 16th 1864, to Mr and Mrs Dosett, a middle-class couple living in central London. Eventually one of eleven children, Lucy is the seventh oldest, not the first, not the middle, not the last.

She is, however, one of the six to survive past childhood, infant mortality rate running rampant.

She's an odd child, the nanny bemoans, refusing to drink anything but cool water, only after it's been boiled in a tin (not lead, it cannot be lead, the girl insists) pan. So many odd little quirks, and yet, she's the healthiest child the family had produced.

Sometimes the nanny looked upon her and wondered.

It isn't just her health though, Lucy Dosett proves to be smart, smarter than her entire family, though Mr Dosett insists otherwise. She picks up the Queen's English unnervingly quickly, proving just as affluent with mathematics upon its introduction.

Lucy Dosett is born 1864, and it is unquestionable fact that she is a bright, if strange girl.

She naps during the day, claiming fatigue. She refuses to dine upon anything cooked within a lead pan, citing poison. Barely out of her toddling years, a scarf wrapped tight around her face and wearing four pairs of gloves, Lucy tears down the brilliant green wallpaper of the family room.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Mr and Mrs Dosett had been discussing the 'arsenic scare' the doctors were advocating just a day prior. With the removal of the paper (and a harsh beating to little Lucy who bore the canning stoically), the family's health improved, though the nanny does not believe any other than herself even noticed.

Regardless, the arsenic wallpaper never returns, Mrs Dosett claiming trends change and they should just wait for the next instead of pander to the now.

Dismissed as a nanny when the Dosetts' final child turns five, little Lucy is just short of turning ten at this point, and as the nanny leaves, she never forgets that wicked gleam of intelligence to her eyes.

It is unnatural, and the nanny never quite realise just how close to home she came with that feeling.

.

For known only to herself, Lucy Dosett is also born with a lifetime of memories stuffed inside her head.

Memories from a lifetime more than a century in the future.

Just like that, she doesn't fit it.

What is commonly accepted as normal within her head is ostracised here, in the passé world she's found herself in. It's all wrong; the way people behave, the way they ignore or actively encourage things that would kill them, the whole time period is wrong.

She doesn't belong here.

This golden-brown hair isn't hers, these cornflower blue eyes do not belong in her skull, those freckles should not decorate her face. It should be a heart-shape, not an oval, the skin should be tan, not this sunless pale. But that is the fashion; the poor are tan for they work in the fields, toil away beneath the sun. Those with money are like snow; never leaving the shade and never melting away.

Sometimes it does feel like Lucy will melt away, under these burning gazes that protest everything she does. She becomes ice, projections upon a surface, allowing them to see only what they wish, what they expect as they gaze upon her. Her core remains still though, unchanged.

As her teenage years come she naps in the day because night becomes an escape.

When the family sleeps, Lucy pulls on the britches stolen from her brother and flees from the window.

Slowly, she becomes skilled in parkour. The rooftops of London become her escape, her freedom. Every so often someone will catch sight of her, but with her hair tightly braided to her skull, her boyish clothes, they assume she's a boy and a poor boy at that. If they don't believe themselves capable of catching her (and few bother to try when they see how she moves) then the graciously ignore her existence.

So, despite the harsh rules, despite how she feels like a stranger in this body, Lucy adapts.

.

Then she learns the father of this body (he is not her father, for a father would never discipline a child like that man does) is searching for a husband, for a man to push her off onto.

For despite her strangeness, she is healthy, the healthiest middle-class girl in their neighbourhood. Not surprising, given that she doesn't openly invite substances upon herself that could kill.

That opens up her prospects, her father had said to her eldest brother. Lucy's elder sister, the one that survived childhood, is already married with two children.

It is not a life Lucy wants for herself, shackled to another's whims.

That night she runs faster, jumps higher, and cares a little less about how she'll land. It doesn't matter though, because by now it is engrained in her body to lessen the impact, to come up rolling.

This continues for a fortnight as more and more men, some young some not so young, arrive for meetings in her father's study.

.

Her sixteenth night of nonstop fleeing, of escaping between dusk and dawn, is when she finds the way out, even if the cost is steep.

.

"I believed it was one of our kind at first. A stupid one, but one of us."

Lucy stills upon the rooftop, the shingles shivering beneath her feet, still nailed in place but nowhere near as secure as they had once been. Cautiously, hands balled into fists despite a distinct lack of any kind of fighting experience, Lucy throws a glance over her shoulder, and her breath catches in her throat at the mere sight of him.

Dark hair falls around his face in soft coils, the black of coals that spark with embers, darkness with only the slightest tinge of red. He is one of those sights that steals away the very breath of your lungs, not that Lucy has witnessed such a sight in this life.

There are no natural wonders in London now, only pollution and industrialisation, grey and grey, smog and smoke.

This is the first thing she has looked upon and thought 'beautiful'.

Within the setting of 1882's London, he doesn't belong. Just like her.

Perhaps she is broken, but looking upon those crimson eyes, meeting the gaze of the predator, she feels no fear. Why would she? Lucy has died once before and it is not as if she has anything significant to cling to in this life.

That is not to say she wishes to die; she has just… not yet lived. Trapped in some terrible in between state.

"Why do you fly across the rooftops, Oiselle?"

Frowning, Lucy hunches her shoulders slightly, taking a step back towards the drop she'd been intending to take. Something within her stomach declares she will not be able to flee though, that she won't get away. Even if she runs, her fate would not change. Something will either happen today, or it won't.

"I'm running, I guess. Though I always end up going back to that house; there's nowhere else to go in this place." Spreading her arms wide in a gesture towards the grey expanse of London, Lucy takes one more look at her unnatural company before she sits herself down upon the tiles of the roof.

The chill of February, early February, is contained with the slate. It penetrates the thin material of her stole trousers with ease and it won't be long until the heat she's generated from her run leaves her defenceless before the winter elements. She huddles deeper into the jumper she wears, her attention fully upon the male as he sits beside her, one hand presented in her direction.

"Rodrigue."

"Lucy Dosett. What brings you to my little escape, Mr Rodrigue?"

"As I said, I was under the impression you were… different. You are, just not the kind I was expecting."

Sucking in her lower lip, Lucy stares at those red eyes again, memories from a previous life nagging at her.

A demon? Werewolf? Vampire? Selkie? Does it even matter? What evidence was there to say this world is the same as the one she lived in? Just because she's in the past and so much aligns; that crimson gaze tears at that thought. Not her world, not unless she was just lucky, never had contact with the clearly supernatural underbelly.

"Different… They've tried stamping it out of me. I just got better at hiding," Lucy muses, looking up at the sky. They talk some more, though nothing of any real substance is shared.

Rodrigue is French; when asked his age, he proclaims himself young in body and old in soul. She silently crosses werewolf from the list. Not unless they come with an extended lifespan too.

They talk and they talk and then the sky threatens to birth the sun once more. Lucy must take her leave, if she wants to keep the illusion going a bit longer.

.

 _"There is a way out, from under those stamping feet."_

 _"I'll think about it."_

.

Lucy gets home, and for three nights, she does not run, does not fly.

Then the father of this body calls her into his study, introduces a gentleman with a name she pays no attention to and an age exceeding her own. She performs the expected notions, ignores how his eyes linger on her figure (a small waist with a swell of birthing hips, the lithe muscles parkour brings hidden beneath swathes and swathes of fabric) and she gets through the day.

As the moon hangs high in the sky, a thin nick of white in the darkness, Lucy packs. She takes the jewellery, what she likes and what she doesn't.

Then she steals into the night.

.

She finds that same rooftop, sedimenting by the stretch of chimney that protrudes. She's not sure what she'll be giving up, not sure what kinds of burdens she will be taking on. But she knows what she gains (freedom; no more stamping feet, no more possessive eyes, no more objectifying) and that makes it worth the risk.

.

Rodrigue finds her just before dawn, the soot of a nearby factory peppered through her hair, her hands tucked into the fleeing heat of her armpits, her body shivering. He makes a promise as he carries her away.

.

 _"You will fly, Oiselle."_

.

The first few months are a blur, stained with blood, burned with the never-ending ache that lingers in the back of her throat.

Rodrigue is there, but only fleeting. She's not sure where he has set her up, but there's always a human when that thirst hits hard.

It isn't until the fifth month she starts to come back to herself.

Her clothes are a mess, still the very same fabrics she stole (she took them to fly, though she doesn't remember whom they were taken from) back in the before. Though the before is a general term.

What is before? Isn't time a human concept, created by humans?

There's just the now; important things that have already passed remain in her head, while the rest just… slips.

She knows she is Lucy Dosett, she knows she was half way into her seventeenth year when she met Rodrigue and he did… Something. She remembers she asked for it too. Remembers fleeing, flying.

The rest is coming back in trickles, but she thinks nothing more of it.

Rodrigue tells her they must stay out of the sun, they must be careful as they hunt, otherwise greater powers will seek to stamp them out.

Lucy has escaped from the tread of one foot; she had no desire to end up beneath another. So she follows his rules, listens to his tales. She learns.

Then the day comes a handful of years later when Rodrigue decides he will be moving on. This sector of Paris, it is territory in which a Newborn can be deposited to learn; the seedier side where no one questions sloppy disappearances.

Only, Lucy has learnt quickly, has come back to herself faster than the other two Rodrigue has turned in his lifetime; he only stayed so long to ensure she wasn't just pretending, to make sure there'd be no relapse into that feral state. He says she will be okay, that she is now safe to move out of the designated Newborn sector and try her hand at Paris.

The collective body of French vampires meet only twice every century, and it has been near half a millennium since they decided Paris was a good a place as any for the newest of their kind to learn.

They are carefully cultivated, taught slowly and precisely by their sire. France is careful of its vampire population, if one wishes to turn a human, they must make sure there's a sector open within Paris to accommodate them.

It was during this time that Lucy learned of the Volturi, how Rodrigue had come looking for what he believed to be a fledgling flaunting the laws about drawing human attention.

As one of the few vampires in England, he'd had no desire to attract their attention, to bring their wrath down upon himself, even if the fledgling that she wasn't had been his fault.

He turned her because, like the two that came before her, she was different.

An oddity.

Rodrigue waves goodbye to her on the sixteenth of March 1887 and for the first time since she acquired her name, Lucy is alone.

.

The first month is just that; the first.

She's walking on needles that don't prick, careful though with no real consequences if she trips. It's playing with fire that won't burn, the thrill of testing something without a real fall behind it.

Lucy finds her own limitations, figures out she can go four days before the thirst starts to take over, until it burns and screams at the back of her throat. Perhaps this will increase in time, perhaps she will be able to last longer, perhaps it will never change. She is what she is.

She is Lucy Dosett, runaway of Victorian England, a vampire just leaving her Newborn status behind. She is permanently thirst, eternally young. She is free.

There is nothing she wanted more than that.

To taste freedom, to welcome it with open arms and hug it close to her bosom. While she may carry the ball and chain of bloodlust, it is a light weight, lighter than the shackles that'd once been closing around her ankles, ready to leash her in place. Owned, property to a stranger of a man that society dictated would be her husband.

Well no thank you.

Lucy will never regret her choice. Giving up the idea of a family, of children had been hard, but the desire for freedom exceeded that of children. Giving up her potential offspring was an acceptable price, she doesn't need children to feel complete. There is no chance for children in this life; Rodrigue had been explicitly clear on that.

She has been warned of the Volturi.

.

The crisp winter air doesn't burn her lungs anymore. She tests her resolve, tests her control by begging an elderly seamstress to teach her.

Soon enough Lucy is learning how to make clothes, how to make them the correct way. In the little attic of the empty building she has managed to claim as her own, Lucy learns how to make clothes the way she wishes. She experiments, slowly incorporating styles that just feel right in the fabrics.

The corset is the first thing to go, restrict instrument of torture that it is. The length of the dress is what she alters next, though it would only be wearable during the warmer seasons. She'd attract too much attention from the humans wearing this in the cold season.

Walking through the streets in her own clothes has never felt so freeing; the weighty stares just slipping right from her form; she just doesn't care for the opinions of those that watch her. Right now, the only person that has any form of influence on her actions is Rodrigue, the man who supported her differences right from their first conversation.

She wouldn't change, even for him though. Lucy is happy how she is; the rest of the world will change, sometimes it will agree with her, sometimes it won't. As an unmoving object, the environment changing isn't exactly going to impact upon her, not massively anyway.

She is a buoy in the ocean; cresting over the waves but never transformed by them.

.

Her feet work over the cobbled streets, bonnet tied loosely atop her skull.

For the first time since her turning, Lucy walks the streets in the day, though only when the cloud cover is unquestionably still. There will be no exposure by the sun for it will not surface on this day.

She passes beneath the massive Arc de Triomphe, the structure familiar in the same way Big Ben had been. The life before this, before the human life of Lucy must have seen this monument.

Perhaps that is why the construction of the 'Eifel Tower' looks so strange to her eyes; what she expects to be there is absent.

It does set her mind going though; what is the rest of the world like? What would seem out of place, incomplete? What would give her a sense of ease, what would feel right?

She sits in her little attic, wondering, wishing that she could see the world out there as it is now.

Then, suddenly she is there.

.

It takes her weeks to figure out what's going on.

It's almost like entering a dream, a world where she can walk through the streets, through the jungles and the rivers. But there's never any physical interactions. It is as if her spirit is leaving her body to explore, only that's not quite the case.

Because she's still aware.

She could walk down a street in Paris and be back in England at the same time. Some kind of spiritual projection, and she can choose who sees her. If the humans can see her, if the vampires can see her.

The projection of her appearance, of her scent, of her voice; the only limitation is that she cannot be physically present.

She visits Rodrigue two years later, when she has figured out that focusing on a person can bring her to their side.

She sees the world, all from that little attic in Paris.

She sees the bright tropics of the pacific islands, the clear waters of the Mediterranean, the snow-capped tops of the Himalayas. She can seem the perfume of the flowers, the salt of the ocean, the clean chill of winter air.

But as her explorations continue, it proves insufficient.

She wants to feel the wax of the leaves, the slosh of the waves, the ice of the mountains.

Wanderlust burns through her and Lucy finds herself with the world at her fingertips, unsure of just where to begin.

So she casts herself around, throws herself blindly into the abyss in search of something she cannot quite describe.

The African savannah where the heat of the sun cannot touch her, cannot send her skin into blinding sparkles.

The deserts of the Middle East, watching the sun burn up the horizon until it becomes unbearable to gaze upon.

The stretch of arctic wasteland, snow in every direction as polar bears lumber across the landscape.

She casts and casts and casts, but the first place that hooks her interest is the deep south of North America.

There are vampire wars happening here.

It is so very different to the cultured civilisation that calls Paris home that Lucy can do nothing other than stare, cannot help but to watch one of the battles, unnoticed by all those present.

It is brutally, vicious and horrific; she's under no impressions that she'd manage to live were she to take up the cause. Whatever the cause is.

The former English woman isn't quite sure, doesn't understand why this is all happening. Only that it is.

She walks through the towns for weeks, invisible to all. Why this is all happening though; why this conflict rages to the point that she witnesses a second battle not a month later (an incredibly short amount of time for ones of their lifespan), isn't something she's able to uncover by just observation alone.

And she wants to know, Lucy wants to understand why this is all happening, even as something nags gently at the back of her mind.

How could it seem familiar though; this is not her original world, Lucy is relatively sure of that now. So why does this scrap at the very edges of her brain, like walking over the shells of peanuts that hide at the corner of the road, leftovers from the circus that rolled out of town months ago? It's irritating.

Never one to shy away, Lucy makes her projected-self visible to the other vampires in the area.

The first one that spots her almost puts her off; a Newborn that leaps right at her, fangs gleaming with venom.

Lucy slams back into her physical body, one arm up to defend her throat, the other clenched into a fist to punch the Newborn that is thousands of miles away. Had she a pulse, it'd be racing. Venom pools in her mouth, ready to defend herself, to tear and rip into the enemy that isn't there.

The only way to calm her jittering nerves is to hunt, so hunt she does.

It takes her a week to drum up the courage to go back. She's not really in any danger, she's not physically there. It's hard to remember that when something is coming at you with fangs and claw like fingers.

This time, she sits and observes, picks out the Newborns from the older vampires. They're twitchier than their experienced counterparts; had she also been like that too? Is she still like that now? Surely not, it's been eleven years. Eleven years spent in Paris, learning the language, learning the skills she'll need to pass unnoticed among the humans.

She figures out the vampires with the scars are her safest bet, the survivors; she just needs to figure out a way to approach them.

.

That's how she finds him.

What Lucy didn't expect was the tingle of familiarity that struck her. The more she uses this gift (a woman who has never felt truly at home in her body, had felt disconnected; it's not that big of a surprise that she can leave it partially behind) the more things don't begin to make sense.

This should not be familiar; she should not look upon the scarred blond and feel such unease.

.

It doesn't change that she does though.

* * *

 **I have a lot of love for the world of Twilight, not so much for the plot of the books. Jasper in particular holds a fair amount of my teenage-self's admiration; even as a little 13 year old I would have preferred a novel about him than Edward and Bella's love story.**

 **I suppose it was only a matter of time until this happened, given how big of an SI kick I'm on right now,**

 **Speaking of which, I'm on a break right now, I'm giving it a week before I go back to writing because I feel a bit burned out right now, so no update for Marines this week. The only reason I'm posting this is because I finished writing the chapter before my week break started,**

 **Tsume  
xxx**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

.

Had she seen him back in England? No, that can't possibly be it.

Some vampires had access to their powers while human; had she projected herself while asleep? Had she seen him before through that?

She can't remember, little of her human life remains. Only flying across rooftops, fleeing from a man she would never belong to. Of adapting, forcing herself into a role to keep surviving. Because despite that gilded cage, at least there had been shelter, there had been food and warmth there.

She doesn't remember him.

But there is a lingering familiarity. And that makes her uncomfortable.

It's not enough to stop her returning to Mexico two days later.

.

.

* * *

.

.

Jasper reports the sight of the strange vampire back to Maria.

This is his job, it is what he does.

He is Maria's second in command, the leader (herder) of the Newborns.

They are like infants; Maria creates them, but Jasper moulds them. It's easy, it comes naturally. All they think of is food, the next food source, how full they are. They are selfish creatures, barely able to think past their own bodies to see the world around them. It is why they do not survive past their second year.

Maria will not allow him the time to train them; by the time they begin to exercise their brain, the blood within their bodies no longer belongs to the human they once were.

Maria wants power, she wants sledgehammers not scalpels.

Despite his objections, Jasper makes do with what he has. He's a solider, that's what he knows, that's what he's good at. Kindness has no place in this world, it was kindness that dragged him into this. A world in which race does not matter as he once believed. It is only the covens, your creator, what territories you own.

Jasper may have been curious about the vampire he caught a glimpse of, but she's a threat. A scout, looking around the streets of this town Maria clings to with all her might. It is ripe territory, the human population ever increasing, even as they are consumed. Human reproduction remains greater than their consumption rate in this city; it's the very reason why it is so viciously fought over.

So, he reports to Maria.

The female was 5 feet and a half. Hair the same golden brown as the leaves deciduous trees shed in the fall. Pale features, not Mexican. American maybe, if Jasper had to take a guess, European heritage. Not Spanish, too pale, features a bit too… sharp? It's not the word he's looking for, but it's the only one that comes willingly to his blood-riddled mind right now.

Most importantly, she hadn't any scars, no visible ones. She hasn't fought before, has not faced a swarm of Newborns. That means she's relatively new, freshly bitten but just past the age of Newborn. She'd been too aware to have been recently turned, that much was clear.

Maria's face twists into a sneer, eyes like coagulated blood. Not freshly spilt, only half healed over. It won't be long until she picks the scab off once again, exposes the burning red that lingers beneath.

"Kill her if she exposes herself to you."

It's an order and what is the solider to do other than nod his head and comply?

.

He slips out of the base Maria has chosen for herself, the second best one in the city.

Jasper had been of the opinion a building upon the eastern front of the town would have been a superior choice; a more defendable location given its seat upon higher ground, secluded in comparison to what they currently have. Maria wishes to be near the thrumming heart of the city though; easier to pick her prey that way. That he can understand though.

He's helpless to the primeval burn, the one that scorches the back of his throat, infects his body and attacks every raw nerve.

It has been too long since he last fed; too busy leading the now-deceased batch of Newborns into their latest battle. He had wanted to wait another week, gather information, Maria had wanted the territory right away.  
Slowly he's learning how to voice his opinions, but that does not mean Maria will listen to him, not until he figures out how to make them seem like the right idea to her.

Maria's ears are closed, her eyes never upon his face but instead on the steadily growing patchwork of scars that decorate his body. Each one a mark of victory, proving just how well she had chosen. He is her greatest weapon, her best asset, her most prized resource.

With his abilities controlling the Newborns, while not easy, doesn't prove as difficult as it would for another. He has become quite efficient at calming them.

However their mere presence amplifies his bloodlust; it's suffocating. He barely has a handle upon his own, dealing with the thirst of twenty others is onerous at best. It is a wonder how he has not yet drained sectors of the city dry.

As things stand, more and more people are disappearing. Soon the humans will start to realise there's a little more to it that the criminals that run rampant throughout the streets. They will move on to another city; Maria is already eyeing one rich in resources.

Giving up any territory is unacceptable though, hence the order Jasper deal with this intruder as efficiently as he can.

Even the most experienced vampires in this warzone flinch at the sight of him now; thirty years of nonstop fighting (of nonstop winning) builds something of a reputation. His appearance is evidence of just how many battles he has been in, just how many vampires he has put down.

There is something about a vampire capable of killing Newborns so efficiently it inspires genuine fear in their immortal selves.

Walking among the humans, it inspires a hubris equivalent to that of a god. Life is within their hands, it is beneath these fingers that it shall be snuffed out. To have that turned upon them, it sends them scurrying.

Jasper has long since accepted his mortality within this life; he recalls just how he had been turned. It is his clearest memory from his time as a human. Not the sweet scent of his mother's half-recalled embrace, not the faded dimple in his little sister's cheek.

It is the unearthly beauty he recalls, seen through the film of weak human eyes.

Jasper is within this hell for stopping upon a journey, offering aid to three women he believed to be vulnerable.

Where was the promise that the good and righteous go to heaven, that they are rewarded for their good-deeds? For surely this can be no heaven to any but those who lust for battle, for bloodshed and for carnage.

Jasper had never believed himself to be one of those few, yet here he stands. This is his life now, who knows if it will grow worse upon his next death?

After the first time, the former Major is in no rush to find out.

.

Finding prey is easy.

A teenager flushed with the local grog, cheeks red and smile bacchantic, had been stumbling along the street alone. He made easy prey, his blood pooling within Jasper's stomach. He's careful with this kill, in control enough to be so. The drunks are always easiest on him, too intoxicated to even realise what is happening. Emotions cannot overwhelm him if the victim cannot even feel them either.

Licking the last of the ambrosia from the dead man's neck, Jasper lets him drop to the floor, his visage unearthly pale now that he lacks his life blood. There's never enough drunks for every one of his kills to be this easy; a shame.

"Can you taste the liquor?"

Jasper's head snaps up, couching defensively. His hands are open, fingers ready to dig and tear. It's not necessary though; no threatening moves are made towards him.

Instead his eyes find the woman from the day prior… No, two days prior. The moon has tracked across the sky, they are past the night and into the dark of early morning, that empty space between before the sun graces the horizon once again.

The woman's accent is unlike anything he has heard in his life as an immortal, though it does stir the slightest of memories.

There had been a neighbour, one who lived upon the outskirts of town, just as their family had. The name escapes him, but Jasper recalls he worked at the bank. The lilt of that hazy memory's words aligns with this woman's.

English, she's English. Either a first-generation birth in this sector of the world, or her origins match her accent.

What's more, her words are genuinely curious; as if she sees no problem with speaking to him. She who's skin is unmarked, without flaw, the blue sky of dawn empty of all clouds.

It sets off every predatory instinct within him.

Only Newborns, genuine Newborns have such flawless flesh. Every other vampire here has a handful of scars at the very least. How has she escaped the fighting?

Those eyes are red, but they're not dripping with blood, they do not gleam as Newborn irises do.

"You can speak, right? I mean, if your tongue has been ripped out, I can help you find it and put you back on… Not that we'd be sharing venom or anything! You can use your own to put it on, I mean, we just met, and I- I'm going to shut up now." She buries her face in her hands and everything in Jasper protests.

She's taken her eyes off him, he could attack and she wouldn't be able to defend herself against him, not before severs that pretty head from those thin shoulders. He could so easily tear her apart, all it would take is one leap, catch her skull in the crook of his arm, and then it'd be all over.

His feet never leave the earth.

Completely unaware of just what danger she's in, the woman peeks out from between her fingers, teeth dragging over the lower lip as it slowly emerges from her mouth.

There's something unnervingly innocent about her actions, such a world away from the bloodshed, from the violent interactions Jasper has become accustomed to.

It stills him, prevents him from taking that threatening leap forwards. How would he be able to do such a thing when the creature before him presents such an obvious paradox?

She's a vampire, not a Newborn.

She sports skin absent of any kind of scars, she's never been in any fights. She's a vampire and she's never been in any fights.

It isn't adding up.

There's only the war, so how has she, how has she managed to avoid fighting with others? Does it have anything to do with her ability to disappear?

Jasper's reasonably certain she'd never been there to begin with, some form of gift perhaps? Like his own, only instead of controlling emotions she can, what? Project an image of herself? Is her physical body somewhere nearby? It's a good skill for a spy to have; it makes him twitchy.

"Er, I was joking about the tongue thing, but if you really have lost it-"

"I still have my tongue, Ma'am."

English Lady blinks at him, eyes not the unnatural glow of a Newborn but bright in a way that says she has drunk recently.

"So you do," she agrees with a slight dip of her head, still smiling. Her feet rock back and forth, her form perched upon a wooden hitching rail, hands now removed fully from her face to once again rest beside her thighs.

Another dress, absent of the corset like the first was, adorns her form in a fetching shade of light blue; there's some flowers embroidered into the hem but Jasper is far form knowledgeable in flora, he's not sure exactly what they are. Certainly they do not grow in Mexico, that much is clear.

"I've been searching for someone to tell me what's going on here, but the first fellow I found, er, he went for the kill I guess," she says, one hand coming up to rub sheepishly at the long column of her neck, drawing attention to just how very unmarred the flesh there is.

"So you encountered a Newborn then." Jasper concludes, watching as the woman's brows furrow above her button nose, lips pursing together.

"I guess so," she concludes after a moment, dropping one elbow onto her knee and her chin onto her palm, cradling her head in one hand.

Absolutely no experience in battle, Jasper concludes, not quite sure if it's astonishment that he's feeling, only that the emotion is all his own.

Reaching out with his own gift still produces half haze results, as if attempting to peer through fogged glass; there's a blurry impression but that is all.

Yet he has never felt such, such peace and contentment from another vampire. Even this clouded sensation is more than Jasper's ever experienced before and it nearly cuts his legs out from under him, far more effective than any kind of Newborn attack has ever done so.

"You just allow your Newborns to run wild, do you?" She asks, head cocking to a side and Jasper is hit by just how daringly human she appears. She moves, she twitches and expressive herself with all sorts of gestures. As if she's used to pretending she is no vampire, as if she's used to playing the unwitting human.

He's still reeling from her words though.

For all that they might have been offered in a calm, even tone, to Jasper's ears it is the screaming of a thunder-spirit.

Allow the Newborns to run wild?

No, Newborns are soldiers, they do not run wild per se, but they are not as controlled, not as managed as what Jasper would like. Maria only allows him to do so much, fearful he would turn the masses against her, that he would assume control himself. He's not all that interested in such a thing though; to take control would mean having to keep attacking, would mean having to turn the humans himself. Jasper, he would tire of the terror, the fear the humans give off in the change. No, such a thing is not for him.

The lady here though-

"Run wild, Ma'am? Newborns aren't exactly conscientious creatures."

"Of that I'm aware, but don't you have somewhere to section them off, so they can calm down, until they know not to attract attention?"

What she's proposing is exactly as Jasper would like to run things. He's the one that wants to train other vampires how to fight off Newborns. It can be done, one only needs to look upon him to know that for sure.

Maria refuses such a course of action; vampires taught to think might start considering their circumstances, might start considering if there is something better out there that they're capable of grasping. Might start considering claiming territory of their own.

"This is a war, Ma'am, the Newborns rarely survive long enough to come back to themselves." Jasper doesn't sugar coat it. Rose-coloured glasses (a belief that women were weak and defenceless and had to be protected) are what brought him into this mess, after all.

The woman blinks, confusion flashes across her face. It's not an act either; Jasper can feel the genuine emotion surging beneath the surface of her skin, threatening to bubble forth as her teeth work into her lip once again.

"War? I didn't realise- what are you fighting over, er... Sorry, you never gave me your name?"

"Jasper Whitlock, Ma'am." His response is automatic now, what with the fact his head is currently spinning.

The woman is unaware of the war? Unaware of what they fight over, what the Newborns die for, what Jasper receives his scars for? How could she be so oblivious to what the current state of the world?

How has she managed to survive long enough to escape the stage of Newborn, to come back to herself, and yet be unaware of the constant state of conflict that they are all but drowning in?

What was her sire doing, turning vampires but not inducting them into the war? Had she killed whomever turned her during her skint as a Newborn? It seems the only reasonable explanation. She must have killed her sire and then fled.

"And what are you fighting over?" She implores him to keep speaking, still with one elbow balanced on her thigh, still with her head resting in her hands.

Jasper's quite certain she's not really there though, that she's a projected image. Why else would she be so bold in the face of his scarred self? Everything about his appearance screams danger, even the freshly turned refuse to come anywhere near him at first.

"Feeding grounds, Ma'am."

"It's Lucy, please," the woman, Lucy, insists, sitting up straight and planting both hands on her knees. She pays him her full attention, something he cannot return.

He is not so blatantly confident in himself that he can afford to ignore his surroundings.

He wouldn't put it past Maria's enemies to try and take him out.

"Feeding grounds," Lucy sounds out, face scrunching up. As if she cannot believe the reason behind such a thing. "That's stupid. You should come to Europe instead. I don't know about other countries, but England and France certainly aren't at war right now."

With those words it suddenly all makes sense.

She's trying to lure him away, lure him into a trap. Underhanded, but if she'd played it a bit better, hadn't offered up the incentive to travel to a place where there are 'no wars' so quickly, he might have even bought the whole act.

"I do believe travel is not for me, Ma'am."

She pouts, genuinely pouts and she must have a better grip on her emotions than what Jasper can sense, either that or she's capable of projecting them as a facade too, much like her own appearance.

"Then you're living a very boring life indeed, Mr Whitlock."

Never would he have considered this 'life' boring, tiresome, exhausting, depressing, but never boring. How can something be classified boring when his life is constantly at risk?

In reality, Jasper could do with a little 'boring'.

Before he can think of just how to explain this, how to twist the conversation to get the woman to slip up, to give away any indication of who she works for, what her plans are, she cuts him off.

"Well, I think I'm done. I'll see you later, Mr Whitlock."

She blinks out of existence once again, not even a hazy afterimage left behind and Jasper once again recalls Maria's orders. He was supposed to kill this woman, one more kill added to his already long list. But to do so, he might just have to track her down.

So perhaps 'travel' shall have to be for him after all.

.

.

* * *

.

.

The Mexican vampires are at war.

Marvelling at the very thought, Lucy plucks herself up off the familiar wood of the attic floor, brushing down the dress she wears.

The Mexican vampires are doing battle, fighting over hunting grounds and that's so very strange a thought.

Here in Paris it's all much more civilised than that. To be fighting over food, risking their lives for the greatest concentration of humans in one specific area; it just doesn't seem right. Surely they could divvy it all up nicely and then just share? What is the point in having a big hunting grounds for only a handful of vampires?

Jasper Whitlock (the name rings a bell, why does the name ring a bell so much?) doesn't seem to want to travel though, which- Lucy cannot even begin to image.

How can he not want to explore the world that is now open to them? To see the great expanse of jungle in Africa, the vivid colours of India, the rich culture of China; how can he not wish to experience that? Lucy just doesn't understand.

Why would someone voluntarily stay within a warzone? It makes no sense.

Pushing herself up to her feet, she whirls through the little attic she has been calling home for these past few months, snatching up all of the clothes that are applicable for the current climate. This means discarding the one she currently wears, only to throw a thick winter dress on in its place.

The only attire she owns with an inbuilt corset, it fails to truly pull in her waist now that she is no longer made of pliable flesh. Instead it hugs to the natural curves of her body.

Are there any female vampires who went through the changes now forever stuck with the corset moulded waist? Won't they look strange in the future, when it all falls out of fashion? How many other vampires are there with such marks, markings of the time they lived in, the times they were born in and spent their human years in.

The humans that lived thousands upon thousands of years ago were all said to have been less attractive than those that lived now; are there vampires of only average looks running around somewhere out there?

Lucy isn't blind, she'd been reasonably pretty by human standards and she remains as such now that she has become a vampire. By human standards now though, she would be something beautiful, exquisite.

Perhaps thousands of years ago, her vampire self would have been mistaken for a god. There's a thought; were the Greek gods real, only vampires? Was it possible that, should they have been vampires, that the powers of the Greek gods are something vampires wielded, just twisted as the stories passed from mouth to mouth? Like some strange variation of Chinese Whispers?

Shaking her head (she's getting off track), Lucy returns to the problem that is currently occupying her thoughts.

Why does she want Jasper Whitlock to believe there's more to the world than just the war he fights in? Why does he seem familiar, even though she's relatively certain they've never met before?

When she had glanced upon him today, her mind had supplied 'lion'. It was an accurate description once she'd been gifted the word; he really was like one of the African big cats. All fierce and territorial and ready to defend his hunting ground with incredibly force if need be. Powerful, but only dangerous to those who threatened him and his.

Her brain insists that he has very little to call his and it's driving her crazy trying to figure out why she presumes she knows such a thing.

She doesn't understand her own mind but that is not a new sensation at all, it's achingly familiar actually. She'd been like that in her human life, it's an impression that's never left her. She does not belong, does not fit, and now that she is a creature resistant to change, maybe she'll never fit.

But does that matter?

Lucy likes to think it doesn't.

While the world around her is full of violent clouds, clouds that burst with rain or rage with thunder, clouds that are forever changing... She is the sun. Never changing, always present, she'll be there at the start of every day and she'll be there for the day after as well.

She's not going anywhere, and while she may hide as the sun does, she will always be there.

.

Raking a hand through her hair, Lucy brushes down the fabric of her dress, stretching her arms up and above her head.

There's no pops, no pull upon the muscles like there would have been were she human, it's a sensation she's gotten used to now. She needs more information on these vampire wars, needs an outsider's opinion.

However, there's only one vampire she knows. For eleven years in this life, she has an incredibly small social circle; she doesn't even know the other vampires her sire has turned. Maybe she needs to stop exploring the world through her powers and start on genuine travel.

Heavens, it's no wonder she failed to entice Jasper Whitlock to come to Europe. How would she know how it truly feels if she doesn't travel herself? Which means she'll be hunting Rodrigue down in person then, rather than looking for him with her gift. It makes sense, but it doesn't change the fact she's not entirely sure where she's going.

Maybe she can use her gift to cheat a little, find out where he is and then make her way towards him? That way she's still experiencing the travel, and then she's not going around in circles either.

Mind made up, Lucy makes for the exit, all her half-decent clothes stashed within her hand-made rucksack. To think the rucksack has yet to be invented; how incredibly strange.

She makes a conscious effort to chew on her bottom lip, working it back and forth. If she's going to be walking among the humans, she's going to have to work on those human habits. Like breathing, for instance. Vampires only ever need breath to speak though, so it's not like it's second nature to keep pulling in useless air.

She itches to understand how her new physiology works but it's not exactly something she can explore right now, especially given the fact humans have yet to develop the equipment to look at their own inferior self. She suspects it'll be a long while until something can look upon vampire DNA and figure out what is going on.

Not that the time matters; Lucy has all the time in the world right now. Time she can fill with travelling, with experiencing the world, building her argument on why travel is such a good thing.

Maybe she'll even be able to work out why it is that she wants Jasper Whitlock to leave his vampire war behind too.

* * *

 **I feel like I'm dying; I haven't gone three minutes without coughing for the past two hours. Cheer my sick self up with some reviews, if you thought this was any good, please?**

 **Tsume  
xxx**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

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Had she any real need to breathe perhaps the air would have been caught in her throat right now.

Lucy slips into a side alley, well aware of her stalker.

She could feel the weight of his gaze, smell the liquor on his form, hear the excited pounding of his heart, all since he started following her through the streets five minutes ago. His excitement has only risen since she took a turn into the quieter backstreet.

Clearly, he thinks he will be the one winning their little confrontation which is… If this had been more than a decade ago, had this been when she was soft and weak and human, that may have been the case.

She is none of these things now though.

This man has failed to notice, stalks her as if she is the prey and he the predator. She'll be doing the human women a favour by taking him off the streets.

Lucy leaps up onto one of the many windowsills that pepper the walls of the alleyway, fingers digging into the brick, forcing handholds to form where there formerly were none.

Her stalker waltzes into the alleyway, the smugness melting from his face as winter's snow does before spring.

The icy superiority thaws away to reveal newly birthed confusion, his eyes wide as he swings back around to stare out of the mouth of the alley, as if he has somehow missed her escape.

It has Lucy shaking her head, venom pooling in her mouth.

A girl's gotta eat, or so the saying goes.

.

When she appears back in Mexico, she does so with careful trepidation.

While it is the early hours of the morning in Belgium, the dark of night has only just begun to sweep across the land here. She's chosen to remind invisible this time, though she doesn't doubt that the blond, Jasper, will sense her with his gift. She's not quite sure what it is, if it's just a sense for when there are people watching him or not, but the point is he'll know she's here. He just won't be able to pinpoint her.

Leaping up onto the ledge of one building, Lucy peers over the edge, watching the blond vampire as he slinks through the streets.

There's nothing overly loud about his movement, but he does progress along the road as if he is the most dangerous thing to walk upon it. With all those scars, she can see why. He may wear a long-sleeved shirt, but that does little to hide the network of crisscrossing scars that encase the strong column of his neck. There are marks on jawline, some neat, some messy, but all oval shaped.

She cannot even begin to imagine just how many people have tried to take a bite out of the vampire before him, cannot imagine how many people he has put down in response to such an attack upon his person.

Jasper Whitlock has the appearance of a man at war, that is an unquestionable fact.

Lucy's heart aches.

She doesn't understand why they're fighting like this, surely there is enough space out here, enough of a dense population, that they could come together as a collective coven and feed without worry? Why do they fight, risking life and limb for something that could just be shared out? It makes no sense.

They, they're like, like savages or something.

This isn't the first time she's visited Mexico this week, but it is her first-time tailing Jasper Whitlock since their last interaction, since that conversation they'd shared.

She's witnessed the other fractions here gearing up to fight, which is why she knows that Jasper is currently leading a Newborn army into battle. She's going to get to witness this, witness a true fight between vampires. Newborns at that.

Her own time as a Newborn isn't something Lucy can really remember. Just a hazy of thirst, of instinct that'd engulfed her. It'd taken her a while to come back to herself, and though it felt like forever in her own mind, Rodrigue had insisted she has been the quickest of those he's turned to regain rationality.

A terrifying thought.

Springing to another rooftop in order to keep pace with the only person she knows her, Lucy, wonders just why it is that she must move her projected image as she would her real body. She cannot physically touch anything here, yet she cannot fly, cannot move by the power of thought alone. It makes no sense, but then little about her situation does.

How is it that this body can sustain itself on nothing but blood? What about the venom makes her capable of living off of that? Why that source alone?

She doesn't understand it, though she hopes to do one day in the future.

Still, she knows exactly what Jasper Whitlock is leading his army towards. There are greater numbers upon the opposing side, but they're... wild. Well, wilder, for lack of better description.

Maybe his power has something to do with being able to quell the bloodlust of the Newborns? No, that can't be it, because how would he be sensing her otherwise?

Those startling red eyes (he's fed recently, very recently) find her general location again and Lucy nervously worries her lip between her teeth, a human habit she has once again re-ingrained into her behaviour.

Should she warn him? They've had but one conversation and while he'd been polite, Jasper Whitlock had also been cold. As an intruder though, he couldn't really treat her as anything but.

Before she can change her mind, Lucy allows her projected image to become visible again, cocking her hand and wiggling a finger, trying to entice Jasper Whitlock closer.

He may not be a friend, but he is an acquaintance, the only one she has managed to really make for herself in this life.

Which, come to think of it, is just sad.

Vacillation doesn't so much as flash across her target's face and he keeps the Newborns marching on.

Lucy grits her teeth, jumping to another rooftop.

It's at that point one of the Newborns spots her, leaping without hesitation.

Hands come up to defend herself, even though Lucy knows now, knows she doesn't need to. Her attempt to block is too slow, comes too late (Newborns are so fast, she hadn't even realised) and it takes everything she has not to lose her tenacious grip upon her powers and go slamming back into her own body.

"What are you doin' here," Jasper Whitlock hisses as the Newborns circle, seemingly cautious now that one of their own has failed to attack her, to hurt her.

"I- I just wanted to tell you that they've got nearly double your numbers, only they're really unhinged," the words taste off in her mouth, like the first time she'd tried food in this body, only to be forced to throw it all up once again. Why could the venom destroy anything but not obliterate the food she consumed?

The tall blond is staring down at her and for the first time there's real emotion on his face.

Confusion. Only slight, but the indicators are there.

Lucy allows herself to fade back; she'll only get in the way, only prove a distraction during a real fight. Some part of her is morbidly curious as to what is about to happen, to see it all go down.

She's never seen vampires really fight before. She wants to know the capabilities of her species, to really understands just what she is.

She wants to understand this war, and to know just why Jasper Whitlock seems so dead set on fighting in it.

Her eyes trail after his form as he marches away, though she does not miss the way he throws a glance over his shoulder back in her general direction.

She follows him across the rooftops as much as she can, approaching what will soon become a battleground.

.

It is like nothing she has ever witnessed before.

She'd known the Newborns were uncontrollable, were wild and feral.

To actually watch them fight one another though; it's terrifying.

It's a mess of limbs, torsos and heads all torn apart, torn from one another and thrown across the improvised battlefield, scattered like the first droplets of summer's rain. Right before the downpour. She feels physically sick, just like that one time she had to bring up the food she'd stupidly tried to eat despite Rodrigue telling her that such a thing would be ill-advised.

Being sick is something this body is capable of, though Lucy knows she will not be bringing anything substantial up with the motions; she'd just be dry heaving. The venom in her mouth has dried up at the carnage before her and were she human, perhaps she'd be trembling, sweating with a heartbeat that'd attract the attention of every last fighter in the stretch of battleground before her.

The barbaric Newborns are not the only thing that attracts her attention though; as soon as her eyes land upon Jasper Whitlock, they remain there.

He's for lack of a better description, poetry in motion. All flowing smooth limbs, not a movement is wasted.

He takes some blows, that is true, but each one is accepted to avoid a deadlier one, one that'd be significantly more fatal than what he does get hit with.

Comparing the Newborns to the older blond, it's like watching a donkey try and outrace a horse. They're clumsy, they're not built for it like the stallion is.

Jasper Whitlock powers through his opposition and Lucy can do nothing but watch in awe.

This is what her species is now capable of. She could do this, if she had the training, if she had the experience.

It's a frightful thought, to be something that perhaps the humans could compare to the gods of old. Or rather, the demigods of old. Still, a significant step up from a regular human.

Demigod is perhaps the best description of Jasper Whitlock, he certainly fights like one.

It's beautiful; Lucy had thought she could fly as she ran across the English rooftops as a human, had known she could fly when she did the same upon the rooftops of Paris as a vampire.

If she is flight though, Jasper Whitlock is fight. It sings, housed in his every motion, he every movement.

She winces, choking down the whimper of horror that wants to burst free as he loses a chunk of his shoulder to a luck Newborn. The offender is soon decapitated, thrown towards the roaring fire that has appeared. Already limbs are piled up within it, burning bright and hot.

Why is it only fire that destroys them? That's another question to add to Lucy's list as far as she's concerned.

Regardless, Jasper Whitlock has recognised the dangers of the fire, facing off against the last of the enemy Newborn as what remains of his own forces circle them. Like some kind of twisted gladiator battle, some battle to prove he's the toughest.

And he is the toughest, the best fighter she has ever seen.

True this is the only battle between vampires she's ever witness, but what an eye-opening battle it has been.

Jasper Whitlock moves flawlessly, ducking around wild swings, fingers that claw desperately at the air he once occupied. He leads with his elbow and Lucy recalls that upon the human body, the elbow was one of the strongest points.

A vampire's entire body is a weapon though, she recalls, watching Jasper Whitlock's elbow smack into the Newborn's mouth. It latches on instantly, but already the blond vampire has the leverage he needs upon the other's head, severing it with his other arm and a little twist of his captured elbow.

Squeamish, Lucy forces herself to watch as he retrieves a part of himself from the Newborn's mouth, lathering it with his own venom before holding it to his elbow.

Brilliant red eyes, red with all the blood that should have been shed in this battleground, scan the landscape, no doubt looking for the other missing chunk of flesh another Newborn had torn from his shoulder.

Swallowing, Lucy allows herself to become visible.

She jumps down, landing just by the bit of Jasper Whitlock that remains severed from the near-whole man.

"It's here, the rest of you that is," she murmurs, pointing down at the missing piece.

Were she capable of it, perhaps she'd have picked it up and handed it back to him. But she can't, this power of hers may allow her to see the world, but interacting with it is another thing altogether.

Slowly Jasper Whitlock approaches, his eyes still cautious and his face hard. He doesn't make a move to pick up the piece of himself until Lucy has stepped back and away, out of immediate lunging distance, even though it'd take a special kind of idiot to attack him after that show of strength.

As close as they are now, it's impossible to miss the scars that pepper his skin, as freely given as the winter wildflowers that decorated the fields of France as she'd left. They're everywhere and if he keeps insisting on fighting this war, they're only going to grow more numerous.

"Thank you, Ma'am."

Head snapping up from the ground at the thick drawl, Lucy stares at the blond vampire, the other one here that's older than her. Why is he- oh right, she'd given him a head's up on the numbers.

"I'm pretty sure you'd have still won, even finding out there were more of them than you'd expected later," as the words leave her lips, Lucy acknowledges they are without doubt true. After the display she'd just witnessed, she cannot shake the unfathomable belief that Jasper Whitlock will pull through against anything, against any odds.

He stares at her, even as he whets the chunk from his shoulder, twisting to slot it back into place, arm remaining stretched to hold the skin in place until it truly fuses into being part of the whole again.

"I- you fought really well," Lucy says, the words just tumbling out of her mouth before she can think to say anything else. Hastily, she scrambles for more, scrambles to explain her line of thought, "it's just that I've never seen a fight between vampires, not like that, and they were Newborns but you're just like me and you still won. Just goes so show that experience beats strength, right?"

Smiling nervously, Lucy finds her hands going to her hair, looking for something, anything to distract her from the look Jasper Whitlock is giving her.

Confusion, the same face a person wears when faced with the biggest puzzle of their life. She's not sure why she's getting such a look; all she's trying to do is make a friend.

True she'd not managed such a thing in her human life, barring Rodrigue. But then her Sire had ulterior motives for his interactions with her.

She's decided though; Jasper Whitlock is going to be her friend. She needs something to do in this life, something other than steadily exploring the world.

Lucy needs company, and as the first vampire she's spoken to since Rodrigue, then Jasper Whitlock fits the bill.

.

It takes her two weeks to find Rodrigue.

She's in Holland now and has been for the past six days. Not once has she returned to Mexico yet, having disappeared as soon as the atmosphere had become just a little too awkward to bear. Though how a vampire even begins to feel awkward...

Perhaps her human self lingers closer to the surface than she'd first thought. There just seems to be more of here there than Rodrigue had said there would be. If only her mind wasn't so messed up, if only she could think clearly, if only she knew why she had two lifetimes intertwined in her head then maybe she'd be able to get on and get things done.

Instead all Lucy seems to know is how to question things. All she seems to do is ask questions that no one knows the answer to. Or, if they know, they're not truly telling her.

It seems her Sire hasn't changed in the slightest when she finds him, not a hair out of place in his carefully styled appearance.

"Lucy Dosett... Oiselle," he seems genuinely pleased to be saying her name (and that strange nickname) aloud, his burgundy eyes lighting up. He'll be hunting soon, perhaps they could do so together?

"Mr Rodrigue," murmurs Lucy, coming to a stop beneath the tree the elder vampire has taken up residency in. Maybe just because he can.

Maybe because of the small party of humans (hunters?) coming their way, trampling so loudly through the forest that there's no way that Rodrigue has missed them. An ambush then. Well, she supposes after so many years he needs to find ways to make this interesting.

"What implores you to seek me out, Oiselle?"

"What do you know about the wars in Mexico, Mr Rodrigue?"

Her Sire flinches back slightly, his eyes not quite the narrow of an oncoming hunt now.

"Now why would you be asking about such an uncultured, barbarous place, Oiselle?"

Barbarous, that's an accurate way to describe it. There's no structure there, only constant fighting.

Taking a quick glance at the tree-branch that her fellow vampire is perched upon, Lucy weighs its strength and decides to take the risk, leaping up to join her fellow bloodsucker upon the limb. It creaks beneath the additional weight, but it doesn't break. It takes a moment, but the whole thing goes still as she remains in place, nothing more than a statue hidden beneath the thick winter leaves.

"I've made a friend," or so she thinks, "and he's fighting there... I have a gift, Rodrigue."

They talk swiftly, quietly, exchanging information on the past few years since they have seen one another. She is still her Sire's youngest Childe, though he has not been actively looking for new blood to turn. Lucy wonders if she will ever meet those that came before her but she pushes the thought down.

Now is not the time, she already has one thing to chase after, it is no use adding to the list and distracting herself from that.

"Do not do anything stupid, Oiselle. The Southern Vampires Wars, it is dangerous over there."

Lucy frowns, scrunching her nose up as a visual representation of her displeasure. Rodrigue just laughs; he says she looks like a disgruntled cat. Given cats are further down on the chain of existence than humans, Lucy scowls and bops him on the arm.

Then the humans stumble into the clearing beneath them and the urge to feed takes over.

.

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* * *

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.

Two weeks pass between the visits from the English woman. Two weeks between the sightings of the brown-haired Lucy.

Jasper is entirely unsure how he is supposed to carry out Maria's orders when the woman can fade in and out of existence. If she is telling the truth, if the woman really is over in Europe and there really is an ocean between them...

Does he still carry out those orders?

Jasper is a fighter, not a hunter. While the concept doesn't seem particularly hard in his head, tracking the young woman down, crossing near half the world to do so seems an inordinate amount of effort when she herself cannot cause any damage.

Well, perhaps that isn't true. She could damage the campaign, could inform the enemy (their many, many enemies) of all their plans, of their numbers and their location.

But no one has come for them yet.

It has been two weeks, two whole weeks and not one vampire, Newborn or otherwise, has stumbled upon Maria's base.

They have since moved though, exchanged the locations based on Maria's rampant paranoia. Jasper likes the new place; it's easier to defend and there's an abundance of bars nearby. The drunk humans are, easier. Not in a fight, they're all the same in a fight. But they're easier on him, mentally and emotionally.

Not that he would whisper a word of that to Maria; she expects him to be her Major, to show no weakness. He becomes those expectations because it makes things easier; going through the motions, not fighting a war on all fronts. The last thing he needs is more battles to fight.

Crouched low on one of the rooftops, the grand architecture cats such interesting shadows that no human eyes will ever be able to pick him out. Not until he's already upon them that is.

But Jasper has already fed tonight and Maria has had him cull off the ageing Newborns; their human blood had all but been replaced with that of others, their powers etiolating. She's probably out looking for new recruits right now, new soldiers for Jasper to control and lead.

Never train, waiting for them to become conscious enough to train means their substantial powers as a Newborn will have withered away by then.

He hopes she doesn't bring back another gifted, that one that'd been capable of sensing an oncoming attack a second before it hit had been difficult enough to put down. Why Maria hadn't let him train that one Jasper has no idea, she could have been useful in a fight, she could have fought well Trained up enough, she'd have been capable of taking down Newborns on her own, perhaps even with the same efficiency that Jasper himself possesses.

"Did you know the Volturi stopped fighting like this once before?"

Jasper's head snaps up, finding Lucy the Englishwoman sat upon a ledge a storey or two above his own.

She's in that blue dress again, the corset still absent, her hair half-plaited back from her face. It'd still get in the way should she have to fight; those long tresses would be a secure handful to keep her in place long enough to entrap her neck in the crook of his arm, relieving her of her head.

"Ma'am," Jasper greets, very much alert now.

Her eyes are a brilliant red, burning bright in the moonlight night. She's fed recently too. She crosses one leg over the other, the folds of her skirt parting to expose worn hunting boots, the sturdy kind that encircle near the entirety of her calf.

Jasper drags his eyes up and away after a quick assessment (good suitable footwear for moving in, though that's not really a problem for a vampire, they could just power through the feeble leather if needed) to instead inspect her face.

Closer inspecting shows the braids are recently done, all neat and with no fly-away hairs; she's not been moving much then.

"Apparently some vampire named Benito made too big a racket with his Newborn vampire army and the Volturi came and put them down. Then they spent a year 'cleaning house' so to speak."

Jasper hadn't known that. He knew they had to keep their fights subtle, that they couldn't allow too much notice to spread to the humans, but he hadn't known such a thing had happened before. That the Volturi, whom he has only a passing knowledge of, had stepped in.

The Volturi were a coven of incredibly gifted vampire built up over thousands of years, that was the extent of Maria's knowledge. Or rather, the extent of what she'd shared with him.

It was a better tactic, one Jasper approved of but one that Maria wouldn't entertain. He can understand to some extent; it would take years to gather up skilled enough vampires, to find enough vampires with good, useful gifts to really prove a threat. In that time, they'd have to keep defending their territory against other Newborn armies; it just wasn't a feasible game plan.

Or rather, Maria didn't want to make it a feasible game-plan.

It'd take a lot of careful movements but it could be implemented. They were constantly playing the short-game here though, never the long one.

Jasper has accepted his place in the world and he'll just keep moving. He's dead, it's not exactly like he needs to keep living after all.

"You've got to be quiet for that reason, okay?"

Jasper blinks, brows furrowing in confusion. Is 'okay' not an American word? Has it already migrated across the ocean to England? A fair portion of time has passed, Jasper accepts. It's not as if he's really being paying attention to the passage of time.

"I am well aware of the Volturi, Ma'am."

"I figured you would be, I just wanted to make sure. I- we're friends, right? I mean, you might not think so, but I like to think we are. I don't have anyone else to talk to outside of Rodrigue, the vampire that turned me that is."

Jasper doesn't know a Rodrigue and he knows all the big players in Mexico. Perhaps, perhaps the woman is telling the truth, perhaps she really is in Europe.

"I'm not really sure how to make friends as a vampire."

"That is because there is no such thing as friends among vampires, Ma'am," Jasper drawls, watching the vampire that acts far too human flinch at his words, a frown crossing her face.

"Maybe not here in Mexico, but I'm sure they will be in other places. The world's a big place, Jasper Whitlock. I'm sure there's room within it for vampires to be friends." That makes one of them. What an incredibly naïve woman.

"You don't believe me," she murmurs, her entire face falling as her words tumble from her mouth.

"I'm afraid not, Ma'am."

For a moment, it almost looks as if she's going to try arguing with him, as if she's going to attempt to get him to see things, see the world from her point of view. Jasper is too bathed in blood, in blood and venom to ever adopt such a viewpoint though.

"Well, I hope you do someday. Until then, you're my friend, even if I'm not yours."

Ridiculous. Is this some kind of attempt to win him over to an opposing side? Should he be looking out for a Rodrigue leading a Newborn army at some point? Perhaps this Lucy is to Rodrigue what Jasper is to Maria. A second in command, scouting out the area.

"I came to warn you that there's a group of Newborns heading your way, led by a vampire called Santigo." That name he does recognises; one of Maria's rivals. He's not sure how much he can trust this woman's information, but the last time she warned him of the numbers being greater than what they'd been expecting and it'd been a truth.

Better to be safe than sorry in this case.

They don't have any Newborns right not, not unless Maria has been exceptionally busy tonight and if that were the case, she'd have wanted him with her to quell their emotions.

It appears they will be losing territory tonight, which means he'll be fighting to gain it back soon. If what the Englishwoman said is true, that is.

"You have my gratitude, Ma'am."

"And you've got my friendship, Jasper Whitlock. Someday I'll prove that to you."

* * *

 **I still have no idea what I'm doing with this, but you know, I kinda like it.**

 **I don't know how long this fic is gonna be, but I do know that I have plans for Lucy to head to America in the next chapter.**

 **So hopefully you people know the drill; -any thoughts on the waffle then please share via review.**

 **Tsume  
xxx**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

.

"Have you ever been decapitated during this fight?"

It has been a long day reigning in the Newborns, Jasper has long since reached the end of his rope. So why is it that the woman's asinine question is a comfort? She's high up again, sitting on the edge of a house roof; it's about the only sensible thing she ever does, taking the high-ground.

"You witnessed a battle here, Ma'am. Do you really believe I've managed to avoid such a fate?"

The key isn't to avoid being decapitated, it's to retrieve the head and keep going. Thankfully, Jasper's has only suffered through that particular experience twice so far.

"That's unfortunate," Lucy (he should really start thinking of her by name because it is clear she won't be leaving of her own accord) whispers, one hand going up to rub at her neck.

"You were decapitated?"

The words stumble out his mouth before he can stop them. It's research, he tells himself. This kind of hint, knowing the current events that occur around her physical body may help him learn of her location. It is strange though; ever since they first met she has been without flaw, and though a decapitation will not leave scars (there's no venom involved, that's the only thing that leaves a mark, that's the reason Jasper's arms and chest and neck are absolutely littered with scars) to know she has suffered such a blow…

Lucy huffs, blowing a brown lock back from her face to brush by the sharp cut of her cheekbone instead.

"Rodrigue, my Sire, insists that if I'm going to come to America I need to know how to defend myself before I do."

Her expression is a particularly mulish thing, arms folded across her chest to leave her entire demeanour screaming 'petulant child'. But there's a little smile tucked into the corner of her lips, one that doesn't make sense to Jasper. It itches beneath his skin, the rough rub of cheap cloth working over his brain.

There's something about that smile, something he should know but it's escaping him, water trickling through the space between his fingers.

"I don't like missing my head," Lucy the Englishwoman confides, as if anyone in the world likes having their head forcibly removed from the body. "But I suppose at least Rodrigue didn't play keep away."

Her thin shoulders give a little shrug, as if to show she's completely unaffected by the idea, and something slots into place.

Her instincts are wrong. It's been bothering him for a while, a mental variation of the constant burning in the back of his throat that he just hasn't been able to put his finger on. Now he realises though.

Her eyes trace over the lacework of scars upon his skin, but she doesn't flinch away. She sees them, acknowledges their existence. That's all. There's no other reaction, nothing to indicate she looks upon the scars and thinks 'I need to run' as every other vampire he's met does.

True some of them overcome their instincts to fight, Newborns themselves think twice but their blood-lust and baser instincts implore them to attack anyway. Not once has Jasper caught this woman cringing away at the sight of them, not once has he seen her react negatively to them.

It's wrong; that's what's setting him off. She feels far too confident in his presence. Evidently, she has nothing to worry about giving that she is not physically present but it still bothers him.

"Very few people are pleased by decapitation," Jasper drawls, refusing to mirror her, to fold his arms across his chest. It'd take him a moment too long to unfold them to deal with an attack and though she's not physically present that doesn't mean other vampires aren't in the area. He's not the only gifted vampire out there and there's clearly a wide scope of what vampires can be capable of.

Given that Lucy the Englishwoman is capable of projecting her mind and appearance supposedly across oceans, it's not unrealistic that some vampire may be capable of suppressing his scent or sound, or even having a gift for going unnoticed.

"And now I know why. I'd rather not go through it again, but Rodrigue is insistent. It's probably a good thing though, I mean I watched you fight and I'd never seen anything like it before, but you're still covered in scars. So I've got a lot to learn, but I guess I've got a lot of time to learn it in."

It's things like this that almost make Jasper believe her, the way she so casually inserts her insistence that there are places out there where there is no fighting right into conversation, seemingly with little to no thought on the matter.

The blond cannot even begin to imagine a world in which their stagnated life is not measured with just weeks, but instead years, decades even. Here it's a stroke of luck if a Newborn manages to pull through a year as a vampire, if they manage to survive enough fights to last that long. Maria never lets them live past the two-year mark, though it has been a while since they've had one endure to that point.

That Lucy the Englishwoman speaks so casually of it, it almost has Jasper believing.

Almost.

"Perhaps," Jasper allows, for lack of anything else to really say. The conversation has stagnated, though such a thing isn't unexpected. They are not exactly beings of change after all, moments of nothing should be commonplace.

Jasper finds himself in constant motion as a result of Maria's greed, her ambition for more territory. Sometimes it seems as if this is no longer so much about the feeding grounds as it is about the ownership of land itself. Greed, a lust for power. Jasper doesn't quite understand it, he'd be content with a small slice of land, the knowledge he could hunt without fear. Land with a fair portion of bars and drunken humans.

The drunks are always easiest on him.

"Do you keep track of the days in the South?" Lucy the Englishwoman asks, head tilting to a side, mannerisms far too human than Jasper thinks he'll ever be comfortable with. These are the moments when he expects to uncover a heartbeat, to hear it pulse within her chest.

But there's a ringing silence hidden behind her ribcage, just the same as his own. It doesn't change the fact the lack of pulse proves jarring.

"It's new year's today, 1894," she continues despite his lack of answer, head tilting to look upon the starry night's sky. "I travelled, saw all the different traditions the humans indulge in. Though China doesn't celebrate new year until later on, which I guess is a given, I wouldn't be happy is I was from the East and the West kept trying to impose dates and differences in our cultures on me..." she trails off thoughtfully, teeth running over her bottom lip.

Jasper has absolutely no idea what she is talking about.

While he may not believe her on the state of things upon the continent, it was becoming undeniable that she was in fact an ocean away. That she plans to come to America regardless of the 'state of things', the constant battles... Jasper cannot accept that someone would willingly wade into a war zone such as this if the world she lives in is one of peace.

It is the main hindrance, the one bit of proof he has against her proclamations of the lack of territory fights in England, France and whatever country she currently resides in. He has long since concluded she was rather naïve, he needs no more evidence of it, but it all keeps pilling up anyway.

"I guess I better get back to actually training," Lucy the Englishwoman murmurs, running a hand through her long hair, exhaling heavily as she does so. "It was nice talking to you again, Jasper. I wish you well until we meet up again."

She holds up her right hand, repeatedly opening and closing it.

Something in Jasper's mind pings and he just knows that the gesture is one meant to indicate a goodbye.

She's gone before he can really truly register it, register this memory from his human days that has slipped back into his brain. He hadn't been aware there was a chance of him recalling anything more than he already had.

.

He doesn't return to base until much, much later.

.

.

* * *

.

.

"Get up."

Lucy groans into the upturned earth, working her arms under her in order to rise.

It's a damn good thing she doesn't need to breathe anymore; she'd have been out of breath a long time ago if that were the case. Her lungs still work to pull in the air even though she no longer runs off of the oxygen. Why is that? What part of her has decided that she no longer needs oxygen? Why has the venom changed her body so that it no longer accepts that which all mammals need to survive?

Unless their body is incapable of drawing in oxygen from anything but the blood they ingest? It's a line of thought she really doesn't have enough time to consider right now.

Exhaling, Lucy pushes herself up, climbing out of the trough in the ground, the displacement of earth a direct result of Rodrigue throwing her into the dirt. Again.

Her Sire proclaims no real talent for fighting, but he's far more experienced than her and right now any kind of training is going to mean an improvement on her meagre skills.

Getting her feet back under her, Lucy rises into a loose stance, arms not quite tucked into her side but not extended before her either. Instead they rest somewhere between, the set of her shoulders coiled tight (a default she hasn't been able to correct herself of yet) and it takes Lucy a moment to relax them to the same loose state as her arms.

"Better, now tell me about Newborns."

"They always go for the throats first," Lucy recites, waiting patiently for the slightest movement, her eyes locked on Rodrigue's form for any indication he'll attack again. She's so tired of eating dirt. But she's too slow to react; no longer a Newborn, it means they're on even terms physically. It's Rodrigue's experience that keeps tripping her up.

Maybe if she ever gets to the point she can use her gift in battle she'll be able to get the upper hand. She can use her project to see from a different viewpoint, but even for a vampire brain that's something that takes some adjustment. Right now she's just trying to hunt with it, trying to keep her vision going through the project as well as her physical self, keeping her physical self moving while rooting her projected self to the spot or even having to move that at the same time… it's difficult. Really difficult. Her brain isn't quite sure what to do with two different sources of visual input but, she's adjusting. Just not quick enough.

"Show me a beheading hold."

Gritting her teeth, Lucy darts forwards, ducking under Rodrigue's swiping arm. While he may be stronger than she, Lucy's faster. It's just her lack of experience, the callowness that haunts her ever step that prevents her from getting a win.

Still, she manages to get her arm around Rodrigue's neck, one hand clamping down on his shoulder and this time she's ready for his attempts to buck her off, to slip free of her hold. She flows with the motions, brain whirling at a speed nothing in the physical world is yet capable of. Her entire body is a machine, engineered for survival, for optimal ability. As soon as she learns something, it is never forgotten, as soon as she realises a mistake, her brain registers it and it is not unintentionally made again.

She lets her grip slip slightly and Rodrigue capitalises upon that, swinging around to break free of her hold. But Lucy follows the motion, using his momentum against him in an attempt to relieve him of his head.

The sound is absolutely monstrous and even if Rodrigue hadn't flipped her from his back she wouldn't have been able to go through this anyway.

Not with him, not Rodrigue who saved her from being chained to a boring, lacklustre life.

"Never hesitate, Oiselle, that is more certain to kill you than any lack of skill." She wants to spit out that she's aware of that, wants to scream that she knows that, but he's right. If she removes Rodrigue's head it'll just as easily go back on, it's nothing permanently damaging. It's just difficult to keep that in mind when she's beginning the actual process of decapitation.

"I know, I'm aware, it's just..." Lucy trails off, giving a feeble shrug of her shoulders, once again sprawled out upon the dirt from where Rodrigue has thrown her down.

"I think perhaps I should bite you again, so you have an idea of the kind of pain you can expect in battle should others sink their teeth into you."

The very idea has Lucy's teeth grinding hard.

She has one scar imprinted upon her upper arm. It's Rodrigue's bite, the bite he'd taken of her flesh in order to facilitate her change. He'd managed to bite down far enough that he'd struck the deep vein hidden beneath her biceps; it'd made for a quick change. Right now, it is the only scar Lucy wants upon her body.

She wants to earn anything else, to have done battle with others of her kind.

She doesn't need a reprimanding bite from Rodrigue in the same way she hadn't needed caning from the father of this body. The latter had still happened regardless of her wishes, but she holds Rodrigue to a higher standard than she ever did that man.

Her Sire knows it too; his threat is an empty one. For all that they are vampires, for all that they see the humans as nothing more than a simple food source, for all that they are selfish beings... Rodrigue is kind to her.

She is his creation, such a thing should not be so surprising. But then she thinks upon Jasper Whitlock and his network of scars, of never-ending battles with no finishing line in sight.

There will be no D-Day for Jasper Whitlock, will be no sudden surge of improvement, no decisive battle...

What is D-Day?

Lucy feels as if that is something she should know, she has just used it in a thought, but when she reaches for the context behind it, it's grains of sand through fingers. Her mind isn't quite right, she isn't quite right, even now as a vampire.

But that is what caught Rodrigue's attention. He turned her, nurtured her, allowed her to grow into something more. There was no ulterior motive to her change other than 'what could she be, this woman who does not belong as a human, what could she become?'.

Not like Jasper Whitlock, who Lucy is sure was changed for the sole reason of fighting, of being a solider. Expendable.

So much has been put into her own existence while her American friend has fought for everything he is. Just like every other vampire in those wars.

It has Lucy frowning, running her teeth across her lip again and again.

She wants to experience it. More importantly though, she wants to survive the experience. If that means learning not to hesitate, learning not to flinch away at the thought of ripping Rodrigue's head from his shoulders... then that is what she shall do.

"I'm ready to go again," Lucy declares, forcing her legs to steady beneath her, for her arms to relax and ready.

Her Sire is silent as he looks upon her this time, his head tilting to a side. The French vampire is never normally one to hold back upon voicing what has caught his interest; Lucy finds herself a bit thrown off by his silence.

"Rodrigue?"

"You are so very strange, Oiselle. Vampires are stagnant creatures, we do not move, nor do we seek change. We stick to our standards until we are faced with destruction. Only then do we contemplate change. You, you do not. You question, you seek. You are still outside of the norm."

"Gee, thanks," Lucy murmurs even as her still heart flutters in her chest. She hadn't fit in as a human, even now she isn't quite right. Rodrigue says is as if this is a good thing though, as if he would not expect anything less of her.

"I have contacted the first I turned; he immigrated to Northern America some fifty years ago," Rodrigue murmurs, waving his hand dismissively, a slight frown crossing his face. "Theophilus is significantly more talented than I when it comes to fighting. With luck, he will agree to not only house you for a while, but to impart some of his own knowledge upon you are well, Oiselle."

"Does he not have a degrading nickname too?"

Rodrigue's lips twitch in amusement but he shifts back into a fighting stance and Lucy knows the time for conversation is over.

.

Weeks pass by, weeks filled with sparring, with recaps upon Newborns and discussions on all she sees during her explorations of Mexico.

Rodrigue talks tactics, what he would do were he fighting within the wars, if he lusted after territory to call his own. Lucy listens, as she likes to believe she is far from ignorant; not accepting the advice of a vampire decades and decades older than her would be a folly.

There is no spinning-head that comes about because there is too much information being poured in. If anything, her mind is as absorbent untreated cloth in a torrential downpour. It soaks in everything, logs it all for future reference.

As a human she had always been bright, the brightest of all her siblings both male and female, much to Mr Dosett's ire.

Now as a vampire, she is far superior to what she once was. She is so different than them.

Yet, she still ends upon attempting to blend into the crowd, dressed in a simple woman's walking suit she is just one of many in the crowd.

The trick is playing the shy maiden, the blushing virgin (though in all consideration one of those is in fact true), so that her eyes may dance upon the floor and not greet the humans'.

The shocking red that swims within her irises would do more than startle them, but if not for that Lucy had been unsure just how she was going to get to America without a bloodbath.

As is, she has chosen the biggest steamship she could find. Her control is good, she can remain within her quarters and as long as she doesn't find a reason breathe, maybe if she focuses all her hearing onto the projection of herself that she's about to send back to Mexico, she might make the journey without having to drain anyone.

She still picked the most populated boat she could just in case.

If needs be, she'll drain the biggest man she can find and throw him overboard. It wouldn't be so surprising if he fell overboard and drowned, as long as she picks one known to swim in his drink that is. The bigger than man the large volume of blood she will be able to drain.

Contingency plan mentally in place, Lucy settles herself upon the floor of her small, Rodrigue funded cabin, stripping herself swiftly of the walking suit. She hates it, but wearing one of her own loose dresses would only draw attention she cannot afford.

The burning in her throat was quenched just before she boarded the vessel, having drained six dock workers until she fully believed she would be able to consume no more.

She can do this.

She just needs to take her mind to Mexico instead.

.

The earth beneath her bared feet is dry, the heat oppressive. Why is it she is able to interact with these things but finds herself incapable breaking a fence, of poking another human or vampire while using her gift? It makes no sense whatsoever.

"Ma'am."

Lucy swings her head around to look upon Jasper Whitlock, startling a little bit to see the vampire by his side. They're clearly on some form of patrol and there's a spark of intelligence, of self-awareness to this other vampire. His eyes aren't glowing red; not a Newborn, though given how very defensive he is at the sight of her, it has not been long since he left that period of his life behind.

"Good evening, Jasper Whitlock," Lucy offers, dipping her head, well aware she's now just in the simple trousers and light-weight shirt she'd been wearing beneath the walking suit. Her eyes slide back to look upon Jasper's companion.

They share blond hair, though while Jasper's is that of sun-kissed honey, this other man finds his head topped with strands of soft moonlight, the shade beautifully light in the setting of the dying sun. Both Jasper and his companion are nestled within the long shade provided by one of the many houses that dot across the landscape; they must be close to the centre of the city today.

"Lucy, this is Peter. Peter, Miss Lucy."

"Lucy Dosett," Lucy finishes, belatedly realising she has never professed her full name to her fellow vampire.

"Good evening, Ma'am," Peter's Southern drawl sits heavy within his words, though the warmth that should accompany such a tone is missing. He's blatantly suspicious of her. Lucy's used to it by now.

For vampires, there is no gender inequality like the humans showcase. A female vampire is just as capable of ripping a head off as a male one.

"Good evening," Lucy murmurs, her eyes finding Jasper at the same time Peter's do.

"Is this the one Maria has marked?"

"Miss Dosett is not physically present, Peter," Jasper's reprimand is far sharper than what Lucy had expected of him. No wait, she hadn't expected him to reprimand the other vampire at all. Evidently neither had Peter from the slight widening of his red eyes.

Cocking her head to a side, Lucy considers the duo once again. It's clear that between them Jasper is... of a higher rank? Yes, that's perhaps the best way to describe it. They are fighting a war, after all. Peter defers to him, that much is evident.

The way he spoke about this 'Maria' seems to suggest she's of higher rank then both of them. Perhaps even at the very top of the power scale. But what does it mean to have been 'marked'? Does that make her a person of interest?

No, that can't be right... it's more sinister than that. They're at war, of course they're hardly going to trust someone who's loyalties they cannot be assured of. That's sad.

Jasper is her friend though, so she'll just continue to stick around. There's no harm to come of it for either of them.

"Ya didn't mention she was so pretty, Major," Peter notes, lips quirking up into a smile that fails to react his eyes. It's clear he's trying to reach for that humanity the monster buried, trying to drag it back up again, to prove he's not been broken or completely unmade.

It has Lucy smiling sadly, shoulders slumping. This war isn't just claiming the dead, it's claiming the few that walk away from the battles too. She'd like to say neither of these two are truly living, but then, is she?

Lucy's out chasing after whatever catches her interest, it just so happens she's formed the current goal of establishing herself as Jasper Whitlock's friend.

Jasper and Peter's current goal is to keep fighting the good fight.

Who is she to dictate that what they're doing is wrong? She can stand here and declare they look sad, that they look drained, but who's to say that the world outside of these wars would be better suited to them?

"All vampires are attractive, Peter."

That has Lucy shaking her head, returning to the current conversation, pushing the thoughts aside for later

"That's not true. The venom just amplifies what's already there. If you turned a really ugly human, they'd become standard looking. I think that unconsciously vampires go for the better-looking humans because they relate better to them," Lucy protests, flicking another glance towards the dying sun. It's almost completely beneath the horizon now, the last moribund rays slinking across the land back to their source.

"What."

The dull not-quite-question has Lucy flinching slightly, her restless eyes locking back on the two males who are only now edging out into dark street.

"I spend a lot of my time questioning things, it's just one of the answers that makes sense in my head."

Jasper and Peter both frown, almost in unison. It's easy to see they've been around each other for a while.

It's strange that in all the time she'd known him, these past few months that seem to have moved so much quicker than the rest of the years she's spent as a supposedly unchanging being, that this is the first time she has witnessed the possibility that Jasper Whitlock can in fact make friends.

That the little goal she's set herself is not an impossible undertaking.

"I'm not constantly plotting or fighting, I have time to just sit and think... I can see why some vampires just stop moving altogether, but at the same time, there's so much to explore, so many answers out there to find... I don't know why you can't see what's beyond your little world, Jasper Whitlock."

She's being terribly impolite, ignore Peter as she is, but Jasper is the one she feels comfortable speaking to, he is the familiar face here.

He's so determined to not see past his surroundings and Lucy's not sure why she wants to break those borders, why she wants to expand his horizons.

There's just something sitting in her stomach, heavy in the way that human food has become with her changed physiology, that insists Jasper Whitlock should not be fighting in the Southern Vampire Wars.

Not when there's a better world for him out there.

"So I guess until you learn to look out, I'll keep coming in."

* * *

 **Well I figured out where I'm taking Lucy's character at least. Or rather, I figured out her goal ( _which will hopefully start seeping through in the writing now. She's slowly starting to stumble across it with her questions, but we'll get to what it is later. There's one more chapter of this introductory arc left)_**

 _(I'm stuck on the next chapter of Marines currently, for anyone waiting on an update for that. I'm trying, promise)_

 **Tsume  
xxx**


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